A Christmas Story

Original Theatrical Date: November 18, 1983

A Christmas Story, a nostalgic view of Christmastime in Indiana during the 1940s, stars Peter Billingsley as Ralphie, a nine-year-old who has only one thing on his Christmas list: a Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Air Rifle.

With his parents unwilling to buy him the gun because he might “shoot his eye out,” Ralphie decides to mount a full-scale, hint-dropping, Santa-begging campaign.

He also endures a slew of calamities from snowsuit paralysis to the dreaded tongue-on-a-frozen-flagpole gambit.

The New York Times calls A Christmas Story, “maybe the best Christmas movie ever.”